‘With all your body, all your heart and all your mind, listen to the Revolution.’ said the poet Alexander Blok in 1918. As the centenary year of the Russian Revolution ends and we move into 2018, we have published Listen to the Revolution - The Impact of the Russian Revolution on…

In a tribute to Russia’s theatrical experimenters, for whom the Revolution promised a new world of artistic possibilities, Amy Skinner presents a brief history of an art that 'without doubt, changed the world'. On 25th February 1917, Revolution hung in the air of Russia’s capital city. The protests at the…

Sabby Sagall describes the wave of creativity unleashed by the Russian Revolution, altering the course of twentieth century classical music. The carnage and brutality of World War One had punctured the balloon of late nineteeth-century optimism and established that the industrial and scientific progress of capitalism had not led to…

Keith Flett offers a brief survey of Bolshevik policy and practice towards alcohol consumption. Drink and the left has been an issue since the labour movement was born or made in the 1820s and 1830s. The left, trade unions and political groups often met in pubs for want of other venues,…

What’s Left? A Century in Revolution By Andy Byford, Anoush Ehteshami, Abir Hamdar, Francisco-J. Hernández Adrián & Dušan Radunović Between 29 September and 8 October 2017, Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle and Durham University staged a special programme of screenings and talks to mark the centenary of the 1917 October Revolution.…

Mike Quille outlines some of the ways the Russian Revolution has influenced art and culture across the world in the last 100 years. The Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917 was the world’s first attempt to create a socialist society. It was based on the active support of the majority of the…

Jenny Farrell celebrates the democratising power of Revolutionary art. With the Russian Revolution of 1917, the dispossessed took control over their destiny, for the first time in history. How did artists respond to this liberation? Artists from all artistic movements worked with Soviet power. The revolution offered the state and…

Dennis Broe takes Western cultural institutions and critics to task for their failure to properly convey the revolutionary energy of Soviet art and politics after 1917. This month marks the 100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution, October 25th on the Russian Calendar at that time which was November 7th in…

David Betteridge has written a commemorative work of prose and poetry especially for this Russian Revolution section of Culture Matters. An extract from the poetry is given in ebook format here, along with some illustrations by Bob Starrett. Flight and Fall looks back at the events of 1917 from the standpoint of Glasgow in 2017.

Mark Perryman went to the 1985 Exhibition of Soviet Design in London, and learned the real meaning of revolution. In 1985, Thatcherism reigned triumphant. The Miners' Strike was coming to a sorry end. With Reagan in the White House the second Cold War dominated what remained of international relations. It…

Megan Behrent considers what we can learn from the great strides made in education in revolutionary Russia. "All Russia was learning to read, and reading - politics, economics, history - because the people wanted to know. . . . In every city, in most towns, along the Front, each political…